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Haskell Weekly News
http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20080611
Issue 72 - June 11, 2008
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Welcome to issue 72 of HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the
[1]Haskell community.
Greetings, Haskellites! As many of you have already heard, Don Stewart
has passed on the editorship of the HWN to me (Brent Yorgey). I'd like
to thank Don and John Goerzen for their great work putting it together
in the past, and I'm excited to make the HWN once again into a
reliable, useful compendium of happenings in the Haskell community. You
can expect to see a few changes---for example, hackage uploads will no
longer be listed in the HWN (unless they are announced on the haskell
or haskell-cafe mailing lists), since you can now see a dynamically
updated list on the front page of the Haskell wiki. This edition
includes all the announcements going back to Issue 71, but only some of
the blog posts, since I couldn't find a way to get old feed data from
Planet Haskell. Hopefully next week things will settle down to
something more normal(ish) and I can begin tinkering with the format.
Feel free to send suggestions and/or stories for inclusion to me,
byorgey at gmail dot com. Enjoy---'Putting the W back in HWN!'
Announcements
hfann. Olivier Boudry [2]announced the first release of the [3]hfann
module, an interface to the [4]'Fast Artificial Neural Network (FANN)'
library.
funsat. Denis Bueno [5]announced a release of [6]funsat, a modern,
DPLL-style SAT solver written in Haskell. Funsat solves formulas in
conjunctive normal form and produces a total variable assignment for
satisfiable problems.
DEFUN08: Call for talks and tutorials. Matthew Fluet [7]announced the
final call for talks and tutorials at [8]DEFUN 2008, to be held in
conjunction with [9]ICFP.
Cabal-1.4 Release Candidate. Duncan Coutts [10]announced the second
release candidate for [11]Cabal-1.4.
Programmer's Minesweeper. Bertram Felgenhauer [12]announced a Haskell
implementation of [13]Programmer's Minesweeper, which allows
programmers to implement minesweeper strategies and run them.
hackage RSS feed. Don Stewart [14]announced a new [15]RSS feed for the
most recently uploaded packages on [16]Hackage.
BLAS bindings. Patrick Perry [17]announced a set of bindings for the
[18]BLAS linear algebra library.
Xen Control bindings. Thomas DuBuisson [19]announced the [20]hsXenCtrl
package, with FFI bindings to [21]Xen.
bloomfilter. Bryan O'Sullivan [22]announced the availability of a fast
Bloom filter library for Haskell. A Bloom filter is a probabilistic
data structure that provides a fast set membership querying capability.
It does not give false negatives, but has a tunable false positive
rate.
HCAR. Janis Voigtlaender [23]announced the 14th edition of the
[24]Haskell Community and Activities Report (HCAR).
HSmugMug. Daniel Patterson [25]announced [26]HSmugMug, a Haskell
wrapper to the photo hosting site [27]SmugMug's API.
LIPL. Sam Lee [28]announced the release of [29]LIPL, a tiny functional
language implemented as a term project to learn Haskell.
Glome 0.51. Jim Snow [30]announced version 0.51 of [31]glome, a
raytracer written in Haskell.
ChessLibrary. Andrew Wagner [32]announced the [33]ChessLibrary project,
and mentioned that he is looking for an experienced haskeller to serve
as a mentor for this project.
xmonad-utils. Gwern Branwen [34]announced the upload to hackage of
[35]xmonad-utils, a couple of small Xlib programs which might be useful
for xmonad users.
Roguestar. Christopher Lane Hinson [36]announced the release of
[37]Roguestar 0.2, a science fiction themed roguelike (turn-based,
chessboard-tiled, role playing) game written in Haskell.
Streaming Component Combinators. Mario Blazevic [38]announced the 0.1
release of [39]Streaming Component Combinators in Haskell, based on
earlier work done in [40]OmniMark.
Twitter client. Chris Eidhof [41]announced a simple [42]terminal-based
Twitter client.
Monad.Reader call for copy. Wouter Swierstra [43]issued a call for copy
for [44]The Monad.Reader. The submission deadline for Issue 11 is
August 1.
category-extras. Edward Kmett [45]announced a new release of the
[46]category-extras package, involving all sorts of new categorical
goodness.
Session Types for Haskell. Matthew Sackman [47]announced the
availability of [48]Session Types for Haskell. Session types are a
means of describing communication between multiple threads, and
statically verifying that the communication being performed is safe and
conforms to the specification.
Haddock 2.1.0. David Waern [49]announced the release of [50]Haddock
2.1.0.
ReviewBoard. Adam Smyczek [51]announced the release of [52]Haskell
bindings to [53]ReviewBoard, a development tool designed to monitor
code changes and analyze dependencies.
diagrams. Brent Yorgey [54]announced the initial release of
[55]Graphics.Rendering.Diagrams, an embedded domain-specific language
for creating simple pictures and diagrams, built on top of the Cairo
vector graphics library.
HXT. Uwe Schmidt [56]announced a new release of the [57]Haskell XML
Toolbox.
GSoC. Malcolm Wallace [58]announced the seven student projects chosen
to be funded by the [59]Google Summer of Code.
bytestring. Don Stewart [60]announced a new major release of
[61]bytestring, the efficient string library for Haskell, suitable for
high-performance scenarios.
HXQ. Leonidas Fegaras [62]announced the release of [63]HXQ, an
[64]XQuery compiler/interpreter for Haskell.
Win32-notify. Niklas Broberg [65]announced the first release of
[66]Win32-notify, an inotify-alike for Windows.
cpuid. Martin Grabmueller [67]announced the new [68]cpuid package,
which provides functionality for accessing information about the
currently running IA-32 processor.
Emping. Hans van Thiel [69]announced version 0.5 of the [70]Emping
package, a utility which derives the shortest rules from a table of
rules.
datapacker. John Goerzen [71]announced the first release of
[72]datapacker, a tool to pack files into a minimum number of CDs,
DVDs, or any other arbitrary bin.
darcswatch. Joachim Breitner [73]announced the release of
[74]darcswatch, a tool for tracking darcs patches and repositories.
Generic Haskell. Thomas van Noort [75]announced the fifth release of
[76]Generic Haskell, an extension of Haskell that facilitates generic
programming.
drawingcombinators. Luke Palmer [77]announced the release of
[78]graphics-drawingcombinators, a wrapper around OpenGL with a
functional interface.
The Monad.Reader. Wouter Swierstra [79]announced the publication of
Issue 10 of [80]The Monad.Reader, a quarterly magazine about functional
programming.
Well-Typed LLP. Ian Lynagh [81]announced that he, Björn Bringert and
Duncan Coutts have set up a Haskell consultancy company, [82]Well-Typed
LLP. Their services include application development, library and tool
maintenance, project advice, and training.
hgdbmi. Evan Martin [83]announced the [84]hgdbmi package, which wraps
the operations of attaching GDB to a process and parsing the GDB/MI
output.
xmonad. Don Stewart [85]announced the release of [86]xmonad version
0.7. Updates include improved integration with GNOME, more flexible
"rules", various stability fixes, and of course, many new and
interesting features in the extension library.
Haskell Server Pages. Niklas Broberg [87]announced a new release of
[88]Haskell Server Pages, a programming model for writing dynamic web
pages in Haskell, both server-side and client-side.
Network.MiniHTTP. Adam Langley [89]announced a release of
[90]network-minihttp, a small bytestring HTTP library.
Disciplined Disciple Compiler. Ben Lippmeier [91]announced the initial
alpha release of the [92]Disciplined Disciple Compiler, an explicitly
lazy dialect of Haskell.
haskell-src-exts. Niklas Broberg [93]announced a new release for
[94]haskell-src-exts, a package for handling and manipulating Haskell
source code.
omnicodec. Magnus Therning [95]announced the package [96]omnicodec,
containing two command line utilities for encoding and decoding data.
Blog noise
[97]Haskell news from the [98]blogosphere.
* [99]Christophe Poucet (vincenz): ICFP Contest 2008
* [100]Real-World Haskell: CUFP 2007 videos now easier to view
* [101]Wrap-up: mergesort in haskell
* [102]jbofihe and Haskell
* [103]Writing a Regular Expression parser in Haskell: Part 3
* [104]Real World Haskell
* [105]London Haskell Users Group: Next meeting: Paradise, a DSEL for
derivatives pricing
* [106]Christophe Poucet (vincenz): Lazy memoization
* [107]Neil Mitchell: GSoC Hoogle: Week 2
* [108]Magnus Therning: Google Treasure Hunt primes question
* [109]Roman Cheplyaka: Status report: week 2
* [110]Andy Gill: The unknown cost of dictionaries
* [111]Edward Kmett: Zapping Adjunctions
* [112]Edward Kmett: Representing Adjunctions
* [113]Andy Gill: Performance problems with functional representation
of derivatives
* [114]Conal Elliott: Functional linear maps
Quotes of the Week
* roconnor: if you click your heels and say ``there is no binding
like gtk2hs'' then dcoutts will appear and answer your question.
* mauke: the first rule of fix club is "the first rule of fix club is
"the first rule of fix club is...
* oerjan: so does this mean that a comonad is like a wildlife
preserve on an island in a sea of nuclear waste?
* quicksilver: head-explosion is the solution, not the problem.
* Botje: [on googling for polyvariadic typeclasses] OH GOD THE FIRST
HIT IS OLEGS SITE! / *ahum* / I meant, "yay, reading material"
* Baughn: From my point of view, anyone who understands everything
ghc can do is /scary/. I'm sure that will change once I reach that
level myself, but then again, there's also the possibility that
I'll be in a permanent state of autophobia.
* newsham: I think the problem with people asking homework questions
in this channel is that the people in this channel don't have
enough homework questions of their own to do.
* quicksilver: *** quicksilver beats Deewiant with the
i-will-not-use-fail-stick [Deewiant] quicksilver: I'm willing to
accept a good alternative. [quicksilver] no. all you are permitted
to accept is a beating.
* mar77a: MONAD ARGHH GHGRHGH HGHRGHR RUN
* Cale: Types are a bit like the nubs on lego bricks which provide
structural integrity while suggesting how the bricks should fit
together.
* quicksilver: zip`ap`tail the aztec god of consecutive numbers
About the Haskell Weekly News
New editions are posted to [115]the Haskell mailing list as well as to
[116]the Haskell Sequence and [117]Planet Haskell. [118]RSS is also
available, and headlines appear on [119]haskell.org. Headlines are
available as [120]PDF.
To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the
[121]contributing information. Send stories to byorgey at gmail dot
com. The darcs repository is available at darcs get
[122]http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/
References
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